The Right Thing

Blog for weekly ethics column by Jeffrey L. Seglin distributed by Tribune Media. For information about carrying The Right Thing in your print or online publication, contact information is available at http://www.tmsfeatures.com/contact/ or a e-mail a Tribune Media sales representative at tmssales@tribune.com. Send your ethical questions to rightthing@comcast.net. Follow on Twitter @jseglin or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/seglin

Sunday, August 12, 2018

A recent obituary troubled a reader. The kind
remembrances of a colorful local resident were testament to the large imprint
the person had left on her community.

But it was a detail in one remembrance, however, that
troubled a reader. Apparently, when the deceased chaired the board of a local
nonprofit, she and her executive director found themselves up against a
ridiculously tight deadline to finish an application for a grant.

They began work at the beginning of the week, hoping to
get the materials completed and to the post office so they could get it
postmarked by that Friday, as the grant-making organization required. But as
the week progressed and Friday arrived, it became clear they weren't going to
finish on time and would miss the postmark deadline.

After the executive director told his board chair they
wouldn't finish on time, she left the office. Shortly later, she returned and
showed him that she had gotten a Pitney Bowes sticker from the post office,
which was postmarked Friday.

He told the obituary writer that the board chair was his
"type of girl" and that a town where you could get the post office to
issue an "illegal" postmark was his "type of town."

A funny story about a beloved friend and community
member; undoubtedly, she went out of her way to help her friends and
colleagues.

But the reader wondered if such behavior is really the
kind of thing that should be condoned, let alone heralded. Granted, it did
enable them to get their grant proposal out with the illusion of being on time
(even though it was sent out the following Monday) so they could get the grant.

"I'm sure the woman was well-known in town and used
her connections to pull some strings," the reader writes. Others likely
could not do the same, she observes, but that's not what really bothers her.

"Making light of breaking the law to get what you
want doesn't seem right," she writes.

There is nothing wrong with the executive director
telling the story as a way to remember an old friend. If it's something that
happened between them and he thought it a good anecdote to use to show how they
worked together to advance their cause, then his choice was fine, and likely
amusing to hear for those who knew her.

What's unclear to my reader -- and to me -- is whether
the writer of the obituary checked the facts of the executive director's story
to make sure it really happened as he told the obituary writer. Occasionally,
old stories take on details that might not have happened exactly as they
remembered decades later when reminiscing over a dear, old friend.

Was it right to try to fabricate the postmark to make it
look like the package went out before it did -- if that is indeed what
happened? No. The right thing would have been to work as hard as they could and
try to meet the deadline set by the granting institution. If they missed it,
then they could commiserate with others who missed it as well and didn't have a
malleable post office worker to enlist for help.

Sunday, August 05, 2018

"I don't like to lie," C.E., a reader from
Southeastern United States, tells me. It would be refreshing to believe that
she is in good company.

Typically, C.E. doesn't find herself in a position of
even being tempted to lie, she says. But that recently changed.

Some members of her family decided to throw a surprise
birthday party for one of her close relatives. Knowing that C.E. and the
recipient of the surprise party were close, C.E. was enlisted to help with the
planning and with the effort to keep the soiree a tightly guarded secret.

"She and I talk regularly," C.E. says about her
relative. While they live in different parts of the country, they also visit
one another during the summer, just around the time the party was planned to
take place.

"I don't want to ruin the surprise," C.E. says,
but she also doesn't want to lie to keep the surprise element in place.

But, she wants to know, if it would be wrong to lie if
she had to in this particular instance, or if it would be better to spill the
beans on the surprise rather than lie about it.

C.E.'s is likely a situation many of us find ourselves in
from time to time. Lying might seem like the only route to take to do something
perceived to be nice for someone else. Justifying that a small lie might do no
harm seems easy enough.

I'm not convinced C.E.'s only choices are to lie or to
spoil the secret.

Years ago, Rushworth M. Kidder, the late co-founder of
the Institute for Global Ethics, told me about some advice he offered in a
different situation where trying to decide how to keep a secret without lying
proved challenging.

"You have to come to terms with how to approach
issues like this where you can't divulge all of the information, but to do it
without lying," Kidder told me. He went on to tell me about a woman he
knew who once told him how she handled such situations: "I really find
that I don't ever have to lie; I have too big a vocabulary."

When keeping a confidence of any sort -- whether it's
about an upcoming surprise party or upcoming layoffs about which only you and a
few other managers might know -- lying should not be the go-to tactic. Instead,
choosing responses to questions carefully and honestly without revealing more
than you want to seems the right thing to do.

Of course, if C.E.'s relative comes right out and asks,
"Are you having a surprise party for me?" that puts her in a
quandary. If she says, "No," she'll know she's lying. If she says,
"Yes," she'll spoil the secret. If she simultaneously wants to maintain
her honesty and the element of surprise, the right thing is to change the
subject as deftly as possible and move on.

Keeping a surprise party a secret from the honoree is
always a challenge. But once C.E. decided she doesn't want to lie, her choice
was made and she needs to find a way to stay true to her conviction. Or she
could just avoid as many of her relative's calls as possible until the day of
the party.

Jeffrey Seglin writes "The Right Thing," a syndicated weekly ethics column distributed by Tribune Media. From 2004 to 2010, the column was distributed by The New York Times Syndicate. From 1998 to 2004, he wrote a monthly ethics column of the same name for The Sunday New York Times business section.

He is a senior lecturer of public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He was an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston where he taught writing and ethics from 1999 until 2011.